ABOUT GRACE

After graduating from Kenyon College with a degree in Art History in 1998, Grace L.P. Beason began her career at the internationally-renowned Christie’s auction house in London. In late 1998 she relocated to New York City to pursue event planning. Her first job was at The Knot, Inc., the nation’s leading multi-media wedding resource, where she acted both as Event Coordinator and Associate Editor of The Knot Weddings Magazine. Grace continued her career as a Wedding and Event Planner for Marcy Blum, an author and celebrity wedding planner. She also worked for Susan Bell Special Events, where her focus was on fundraisers for revered organizations such as the Memorial Sloane-Kettering Cancer Center and City Harvest. Notable events in Grace’s early career include planning her first destination wedding at a castle in England at just 25 years old, and collaborating with Ms. Blum on several articles about wedding planning for Modern Bride magazine.

Grace moved to North Carolina early in 2004. She worked as an Event Planner at the award-winning Catering Company of Chapel Hill where she coordinated up to 15 events per month for organizations including Duke University, UNC, and the North Carolina Preservation Society, as well as weddings and social events all over the Triangle. In 2005 she established Grace Leisure Events LLC, a full service wedding and event planning firm based in Durham, North Carolina.

Over the past decade, Grace has planned events all across North Carolina as well as in Tennessee. She has planned weddings for both daughters of the President of High Point University, for the nephew of the North Carolina Governor, and has established herself as a local expert in coordinating complex, large-scale tented events. Grace is also an industry leader in same sex wedding planning. From 2010-2014 Grace coordinated the celebrated Farm To Fork Picnic and she currently serves as the planner of Durham and Chapel Hill Magazines’ Taste the Event, food and wine festival.

Grace has been featured locally in Wake Living magazine, The Bride’s Book, The Knot North Carolina, Southern Bride & Groom, Cary Living, Midtown Magazine, Pinehurst Magazine, and Durham and Chapel Hill Magazines. In 2009 and 2011 she was awarded Best Wedding by the Triangle Chapter of NACE and in 2013 was named Best Triangle Event Planner by The Independent. She currently serves as an instructor at Duke Continuing Studies where she teaches a course on Planning A Celebratory Event.

Grace is a member of the Little Black Book of exclusive wedding vendors on Style Me Pretty and a longtime member of the Triangle Chapter of the National Association of Catering Executives (NACE), as well as the founder of L’Orage, a local nonprofit group. Grace is a proud native of Denver, Colorado and resides in her beloved, adopted hometown of Durham with her husband, Mattie, and their boys, Court and Than.